Music Video of the Day: Human Behavior by Bjork (1993, dir by Michel Gondry)

The question isn’t why wouldn’t I share this video. The question is why haven’t I shared this video yet?

The song, of course, is a look at human behavior through the eyes of an animal. Bjork had the following to say about the idea behind the video:

“Human Behaviour is an animal’s point of view on humans. And the animals are definitely supposed to win in the end. So why, one might ask, is the conquering bear presented as a man-made toy? I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t think it would be fair to force an animal to act in a video. I mean, that would be an extension of what I’m against.”

This was the first video on which Michel Gondry and Bjork collaborated. (Gondry, of course, would later direct Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.) Gondry had the following to say about the video:

“When we did our first video, for “Human Behaviour”, I was thinking: “Great, we’re going to Iceland and we’re going to shoot a lot of great landscape.” And she [Björk] said no – she had a similar idea as my friend Etienne in Oui Oui, she wanted to use animals to reflect human nature. And it was great, because as soon as she started to throw some ideas, they started to bounce in my mind and imagination and I immediately came back with other ideas, and we did a video that was very collaborative. “